Building Resilience in the Age of AI-Driven Networks

[00:00:00] Chad Townes: I didn’t know anything about wireless networking when I took that role, so I just asked why all the time. And what was interesting is when you ask somebody why and they can’t tell you, well, then there’s a better way to do it. So that opens the door to explore how you can do things differently, how you can do things better. And it also makes it a little less vulnerable, so people know, “Oh wait, I can share my opinion. They’re not going to criticize me for it.” So it takes a little bit of the uncertainty away from other folks in the organization to share their thoughts. And I will tell you, even when I felt like I knew what I was doing, I still acted like I didn’t—used that why question because it was so powerful.

[00:00:34] Intro: Technology has transformed how we live, work, and connect. And behind that change are visionary people with bold ideas. Welcome to the Bridgecast, where host Scott Kinka explores hybrid work, AI, and our evolving future with tech’s brightest minds. Presented by Bridgepoint Technologies, the nation’s leading tech advisory firm. Experience a better way, the Bridgepoint way.

[00:01:10] Scott Kinka: Welcome to another episode of the Bridgecast. We are here at Bridgepoint Tech Summit. Chad, you got here this morning?

[00:01:20] Chad Townes: I did.

[00:01:20] Scott Kinka: Alright. We’re here in Miami, and I am super thrilled to be joined by Chad Townes, who is the senior vice president of AT&T Partner Solutions. Thanks for joining us.

[00:01:30] Chad Townes: Absolutely. Thrilled to be here.

[00:01:31] Scott Kinka: I’m super glad we got you fresh off the plane. You threw your bags in your room and here you are.

[00:01:34] Chad Townes: That’s the only way to do it. That’s how this industry works.

[00:01:37] Scott Kinka: I love it. We’re going to get into that a little bit—how the industry works. Chad has spent more than thirty years in the AT&T ecosystem in many roles. Through large-scale operations, customer service, global delivery, and now here as the head of partnerships, his focus has always been on growth, innovation, and people. And I think what we really want to focus on is how enterprises face the next challenge around enterprise connectivity, AI-driven networking, and hybrid work. What’s that ultimately going to mean at AT&T and for your team? Our hope is to explore that here on the show. So, give it up for Chad from your home base there. All good? You’re ready?

[00:02:21] Chad Townes: Let’s do it.

[00:02:21] Scott Kinka: All right. Well, Chad, you’ve been at AT&T for several decades. Yes. Which in tech years is several millennia at this point. That’s pretty amazing. What has kept you inspired and evolving over thirty years?

[00:02:37] Chad Townes: A lot of things, but the biggest one for me is just that AT&T is such a big company. I’ve been able to explore so many different avenues. I’ve worked in our wholesale industry, our consumer business, our business clients. I’ve done operations, I’ve done network. So I’ve been able to get in and out of technology, see how it works, and apply it with customers. And I feel like I’m a little bit of a unicorn at times because I’ve been deep in the weeds on the technology side, but I also feel like I can go talk to a customer just like they’re my best friend at any time. So it’s been that balance that’s let me move in and out of different parts of the organization.

[00:03:10] Scott Kinka: I mean, I love that you said operations, and here you are on partnerships. It feels sometimes like oil and water at the end of the day.

[00:03:18] Chad Townes: But what I learned so much there is what customers really want. In my last job, I was delivering for customers. And so I heard every day when they had a problem, when things were going well, whatever they needed. And it just translated perfectly into what I’m actually doing now.

[00:03:32] Scott Kinka: Yeah. So throughout all those experiences, I’m sure there have been some crazy learning moments. But let’s focus on one. We have a lot of IT leaders who pay attention. How has your perspective on leadership changed as you’ve morphed throughout one of America’s largest and oldest organizations?

[00:03:42] Chad Townes: It’s changed dramatically because I’ve had several instances where I’ve gone into something I knew absolutely nothing about. One of which I went in to lead an organization that was deploying high-density wireless networks for stadiums and arenas. I didn’t know anything about the technology. All I knew is that it was broken. We needed to get it fixed. It was the dawn of the iPhone. Phones didn’t work when you went to these places—at the airport, a convention center. It didn’t matter. We needed to make it work. So it was curiosity—just jumping in with eyes wide open to say, “What do we need to do? What does the customer need?” Bring all the right engineers there to make it happen. But I learned too that it took a balance of a business leader and a technology leader to tackle those kinds of problems. Engineers looked at it one way, the customer was looking at it a different way—what they needed, not how to make it work. And you needed somebody to blend them together. That’s where I fit with my curiosity. I want to know how it works, but at the end of the day, I don’t really care as long as we deliver what the customer has asked me for.

[00:04:53] Scott Kinka: Researching that project, I guess you probably spent tons of time in the 700 level of some stadium just to see the experience?

[00:05:00] Chad Townes: Absolutely. I’ve been in more stadiums than I care to admit, usually when they’re empty though.

[00:05:05] Scott Kinka: All right. Well, we always do this because we talk about sports all the time. Give me your home squads. Who’s your fandom?

[00:05:12] Chad Townes: So I grew up in St. Louis. I’m a diehard St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan. The problem with living in St. Louis is we’ve had a team and not had a team in the NFL over the years. I’ve been gone for quite a while—I haven’t lived in St. Louis since I started work. So, I hate to admit it this year, but I’m a New Orleans Saints football fan because I adopted them as the next closest thing. And at the time in St. Louis, you couldn’t be a Kansas City Chiefs fan. So I had to go somewhere else. It was a rivalry thing. Nowadays, when you’re driving around St. Louis, you see Kansas City banners everywhere.

[00:05:43] Scott Kinka: I was going to say you chose poorly.

[00:05:44] Chad Townes: I’ll take a run there. You got a little run there. But if you’ve never gone to a game in New Orleans and you don’t have a team, you will totally dive in. It’s just like college all over again.

[00:05:57] Scott Kinka: I love that. And where do you live?

[00:05:57] Chad Townes: I live in Dallas.

[00:05:57] Scott Kinka: You live in Dallas. Okay, fantastic. All right. So, you know, you’re in partner solutions. That can mean a lot of things. For people who maybe have a relationship with AT&T direct or somebody who’s just curious about what partner solutions means, just define that for us. What does the role mean? And how do partners live inside the AT&T ecosystem?

[00:06:22] Chad Townes: A lot of people just call it indirect sales. Really, what it is—it’s split into two big buckets. Bucket one is our wholesale business. Think of the other large carriers that are selling networks. If they need to buy networks to fill out their network to meet their end-user customers, sell site backhaul, large pipes—industry-to-industry type sales. And then the other half of partner solutions is really all about how do we go to market and meet our customers when we can’t be everywhere they need us to be? We will never have enough salespeople to meet the needs of our customers, so we need other people in the ecosystem to build those relationships. But we want them to still come to us for the connectivity and the support that they need to meet their customers’ demands.

[00:07:04] Scott Kinka: How important are these partners to customers, given how quickly both your business and the broader technology landscape are evolving?

[00:07:16] Chad Townes: They’re becoming critically important. First and foremost, like I said, we could never have enough people to meet these needs. You just need the sheer volume of folks. But more importantly, customers are looking to buy from people they know and trust, people they see all the time. That’s where these communities come in—they’re able to build that relationship day in and day out with small, medium, or even enterprise-size customers to give them what they really want. And we want to be there to support that, but we can’t be front and center for everyone. It would just never work.

[00:07:44] Scott Kinka: Got it. So before we jump into the bigger picture and trends, let’s finish the segment on Chad. Give me your superpower as a leader.

[00:07:56] Chad Townes: I think I said it already once. It’s curiosity.

[00:07:58] Scott Kinka: You did.

[00:07:59] Chad Townes: It is. I don’t think you can do anything if you don’t really want to know how it works. And I was the one as a kid taking things apart and trying to put them back together. So curiosity has always been there. And it always goes back to my very first job. My very first boss with the company made me go out and answer phones on a customer service line, made me ride with a field technician, made me go out on sales calls. So right at the very beginning of my career, it was instilled in me that you have to really know what goes on around you—not just what you do—to make what you do better. And I’ve carried that through my entire organization, my entire time with the company. I make my folks go work on the opposite side of their business at least one week a year. So my field technicians sit in call centers, my call centers ride with technicians in trucks. And you just get an appreciation for how things really work and what struggles they have that you can help with.

[00:08:54] Scott Kinka: You know, when you think about curiosity—and I love what you just said—to be curious, you almost have to admit what you don’t know. Sometimes that’s problematic in business. I think it’s sometimes problematic for CIOs, but you couldn’t possibly know everything. I mean, you meet with CIOs all the time. Do you agree that maybe that’s sometimes a problem? Like the opposite of curiosity is thinking you know everything?

[00:09:19] Chad Townes: Well, I will tell you, it’s funny you say that because as soon as you said it, a story popped in my head. I go back to the job with the industry. I didn’t know anything about wireless networking when I took that role.

[00:09:27] Scott Kinka: Yeah.

[00:09:28] Chad Townes: And so I just asked why all the time. And what was interesting is when you ask somebody why and they can’t tell you, well, then there’s a better way to do it. So that opens the door to explore how you can do things differently, how you can do things better. And it also makes it a little less vulnerable, so people know, “Oh wait, I can share my opinion. They’re not going to criticize me for it.” So it takes a little bit of the uncertainty away from other folks in the organization to share their thoughts. And I will tell you, even when I felt like I knew what I was doing, I still acted like I didn’t—used that why question because it was so powerful. It opened so many doors and it saved us so much time, energy, and money in all the deployments we did because the team really felt connected, like we were on the same level. Now, there were times where we had to make hard decisions as well. There always are. But people felt like at least they had a voice, they were heard, and it drove a lot of collaboration.

[00:10:20] Scott Kinka: So let’s take all the pundits and the ratings aside for a moment. People know what AT&T is. Let’s put all that to the side. Let’s talk about the fact that you guys have been doing connectivity forever. Technically, the founder of the business is still Alexander Graham Bell, in a way. That’s how you could think about it. Probably not fifty years ago, right now. Exactly. But connectivity into the home, into the office—whatever—we’re accustomed to it now. We have expectations, and connectivity is pretty ubiquitous generally speaking.

[00:10:53] Chad Townes: It’s air. You don’t know until you don’t have it.

[00:10:55] Scott Kinka: Until you don’t have it. That’s exactly where I was going. How do you have the conversation now, given the state of business, the state of remote work, and everything going on with AI? How is network a strategic conversation for businesses?

[00:11:07] Chad Townes: You know, it’s interesting right now. It’s so in demand. You can’t get away from it. Part of the challenges right now is we don’t even know what we need because we’re constantly adding all this stuff. With AI, the amount of data being consumed, the payloads, the requirements for latency—there are things we’re building into the network today that most people don’t even know they need. But they need it. They just don’t know it yet, or they’re going to know they need it in a couple of weeks and they’re going to need it immediately. So I think the thing is the pace of change and the pace of demand. When you decide to go all in on one of those initiatives, instantaneously, you need something you didn’t even know you needed.

[00:11:44] Scott Kinka: I said it on our keynote this morning. Hyper-change obviously eventually drives toward commoditization, but the challenge is that hyper-change is just coming faster right now than it ever has before.

[00:12:03] Chad Townes: It is.

[00:12:03] Scott Kinka: Yeah. I mean, it’s amazing. And I think your point is so appropriate. We really don’t even know what we’re asking for just yet because these tools aren’t really implemented in business yet. I’m sure you get asked for your thoughts on all this. I just did a panel down the hallway around AI. And one of the conversations that came up in the room was IT leaders being asked to deploy AI—almost like you’d be asking IT to deploy cloud a couple of years ago. We just gotta go get some. We don’t really know what for or what it’s for or what have you. In your conversations with customers, do people really know what they want to do yet, or are we just repeating the cloud story? What’s your feeling on that?

[00:12:40] Chad Townes: I think it’s a little bit of both. You could look at it from both directions. I definitely think there’s a little bit of cloud in there—people are pushing it so hard. I think the market is getting saturated. I think there’s all kinds of investment and dollars flowing into it. And I don’t think it can sustain itself. That being said, I don’t think we can get away from it. It’s so powerful. There’s so much going on with that, so we’re going to have to do it. I think we’re in that lull right now where we know we need to do it, but we don’t exactly know where and how. So the killer app’s going to come out, that killer use case. But that killer use case is different for every single company, for every single business. Right now it seems to be highly leveraged toward cost-cutting measures. But the reality is, if you use it for the right strategic reasons, it can drive revenue, it can drive costs through a different vehicle. There are so many other ways that it’s going to drive value that we haven’t even figured out just yet.

[00:13:33] Scott Kinka: Yeah, 100%. You talk about supporting all that—it’s moving, we don’t know what we’re building, and you guys have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the network. You’re constantly upgrading and moving in that direction. And I’m sure in your role, having been in multiple roles throughout the business, if we really don’t know what we’re chasing with AI, how do you know where to place those dollars? How do you think about that in terms of placing the next bet?

[00:13:56] Chad Townes: Yeah. So what we’re looking at right now is we’re doing a lot of work around—obviously we know where all the data centers are, and we’re helping to build out to them. So making sure we have hyper-connectivity into every one of the data centers, because at the end of the day, these language models are so big and are going to drive so much demand, you have to be there. But we’re not focused solely on connecting them together as much as on how do we build the capillaries to that network so the end users that need to use it can get access to it easily? And it shouldn’t have to be a customized build. So how do we get 10 gig, 100 gig, 400 gig circuits into the network so that when a customer needs access to one of those data peering points, we can give it instantaneously? And that’s where we’re hyper-focused right now—just putting more and more network into the ground, more and more spectrum into the air. The other thing that’s unique about what we’re doing at AT&T is we don’t care if it’s on fiber, we don’t care if it’s wireless. We just know that a customer wants connectivity. They don’t care how they get it. We just need to make sure it’s there, it’s as fast as possible with the lowest latency possible. And if it’s not exactly where they need it, how do we get it there as fast as we can? We will even build fiber behind it if it’s wireless first.

[00:15:02] Scott Kinka: Yeah. It’s a brain teaser to think about how just the general shape of networks has changed post-COVID. Right? Because we left offices and then still needed to maintain offices, and then really in the era of SaaS-first, but now in the era of AI, where it’s almost architected around your network’s access to the services that your endpoints want access to.

[00:15:31] Chad Townes: That’s really it—how do we make that happen? And the best way to do it is with fiber. So how do we build and build and build? It’s kind of interesting. We’re sitting here in Miami today. Every month we’re building enough fiber that we could go from here to LA to Seattle and back. Every month. And we’re doing that because it goes back to your point—we don’t know what people are going to use it for, but we know they’re going to need it. So how do we get it everywhere they could possibly need it?

[00:16:00] Scott Kinka: Let’s go from these big stories down to a specific one because I found this really interesting. It’s a great example of purpose-driven innovation right now. A specific use case you’re going after, obviously using your ubiquitous wireless and network assets, but built for a very specific purpose. So tell everybody a little bit more about FirstNet and then just sort of talk about the success and how it figures into the way you’re planning other kinds of purpose-built innovation like that.

[00:16:28] Chad Townes: Well, FirstNet really is a purpose-built network that we created for first responders. It’s enabled for fire, police, military, medical care—anywhere you need dire access in an emergency situation. And we built it not just to make it a better network or a slice of our network, but it’s actually a dedicated network. We have dedicated spectrum, and if a customer needs that in an emergency, we can actually block everybody else off the network and only leave it open to the first responders so they can communicate amongst themselves. So that’s the first and foremost portion of it. But from there, we expanded. We said, “Okay, even our networks get damaged in a hurricane or a tornado or a big event, so we had to build the assets to fill in the gaps in real time if there’s a problem.” So satellite COWs on wheels, light trucks—we’ve even developed drones that can fly over and broadcast spectrum over an area. We can follow first responders as they’re working through a forest fire. As the network’s getting destroyed, we’re right behind them with communications so they can continue to use what they’re using as they’re going through. So it started off as this nationwide network to give them access, but as we got into it, new use cases kept popping up. “How do we do this? How do we fill in this gap?” And it’s just turned into a remarkable opportunity for us, and it’s made our country more safe. It’s changed the way we do business. But all of those things we have in turn put back into our commercial network, so it’s made our network stronger.

[00:17:56] Scott Kinka: I mean, that’s an incredible story. I think a lot of people don’t really understand that it’s there. And don’t think about the logistics of what you’re talking about. So one thing to talk about is a dedicated network. It’s yet another to sort of be rolling trucks to replace it behind the front lines of disasters. That’s really an amazing story.

[00:18:12] Chad Townes: Yeah. They need it all the time. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the middle of a hurricane. We’re parked on the edge waiting for it to happen so we can immediately fill the gaps.

[00:18:22] Scott Kinka: I love that. I’d love to transition now and focus a little bit on our collective customers. We’ll be talking to the CIO here. And I think what’s super interesting about your career trajectory is all those roles you were in. So I want to pull some nuggets out of you. First off, you know, we talked earlier today in the keynote about how you’ve got technology curves, and we generally don’t care about the commodity because they’re busy there, but we still have to feed that with feed optimization to get expenses into the curve. But CIOs are building value for their business in the wave—in the disruptive period. Having crossed so many areas of AT&T, what I would love to ask you is, how do you lead big teams in varying roles with varying KPIs and responsibilities and personalities and pay scales through really macro-level disruption inside of the business? Give us some advice on that.

[00:19:26] Chad Townes: The thing that I found there is you really have to go back and focus on the customer. In our cases, what does the customer need? The customer could be the shareholder, the customer could be an actual customer, the customer could be the groups that you support, it could be just the network. But what does the customer really need is the first and foremost thing. And then you got to find a way to get everybody in that organization focused on that one need. The biggest thing that I found was successful with it is you got to build custom metrics. Everybody wants to be measured. “Am I doing a good job?” But the metric isn’t the same for every group, so you have to change that metric so it ties back to the central theme but is specific enough that the people in that group can say, “If I achieve this, it lends to that greater good, it lends to the collective effort we’re driving toward.” Getting everybody focused on one mission—but one mission isn’t one mission, it’s a thousand little missions that the leader can then tie all together. And then you also have to communicate how those all fit together and what we’re working toward.

[00:20:24] Scott Kinka: You guys at AT&T are obviously building the infrastructure to support the next wave and the next wave and the next wave, right? Whatever those waves may be, we know the ride we’re on right now, obviously. What’s the one thing that you think IT leaders should be doing now that’s maybe different from what they’ve done in the past to prepare for this wave or the next?

[00:20:48] Chad Townes: Part of it, I think, is really building redundancy and resiliency into their networks. I think as you get more reliance upon technology, especially with AI—if that’s how you build your business and it goes down, how are you going to function? I mean, you have to have contingency plans for that. And so I think a lot of our customers and a lot of businesses in general build a very good network and they’re okay with slight disruptions here and there. But I think over time they’re going to become more demanding, and it’s going to be harder to get away from those. You put everything you do in a certain function into an AI agent, and it goes down, well then your business stops. So I think that’s one of the areas—how do you build that resiliency? Whether that be dual networks, wireless backup, even if it’s just mission-critical components of that. I think a lot of us are very single-threaded in the way we’re going about the business.

[00:21:41] Scott Kinka: We’re talking about AI agents replacing humans in the business and doing all this stuff. The difference is when the network’s down, the humans still work.

[00:21:49] Chad Townes: Right.

[00:21:50] Scott Kinka: Absolutely. Let me tell you a quick funny story as an aside. Everyone saw today during Bridgepoint’s keynote that we announced our AI agent trained on all of our internal models. For our IT listeners, it wouldn’t matter as much, but for our partners, it’s trained up for them to be able to do their job better, easier, faster, quicker. We were rehearsing yesterday during the AWS outage. So I’m like, “I guess when AWS comes back up, we’re going to screenshot everything we were going to show just in case AWS is having a bad day tomorrow because that was an epically bad day for AWS yesterday.”

[00:22:45] Scott Kinka: Well, listen, let’s jump to some fun. All right. We’re going to the fun segment. First, I need a shameless prediction. Give me one for the next twelve to eighteen months. It can be sports, politics, tech—whatever you want. Give us something and we’ll look back and have some fun.

[00:22:45] Chad Townes: I know it’s not going to be the Saints winning the Super Bowl.

[00:22:48] Scott Kinka: So your prediction is the Saints won’t win the Super Bowl? You heard it here.

[00:22:52] Chad Townes: That’s pretty much there. I think I’ll go bold a little bit. I do think there’s going to be a little bit of a bubble burst in this AI ecosystem. I think if you look back from a year from now, absolutely we’re going to be running toward AI. It’s going to be invested everywhere. But I think there’s so much money flowing into it that there’s going to have to be a little bit of a reallocation of some of that to areas that matter, especially as people start coming up with the killer use cases for it. What does it really mean for my business? I think it’s going to shift some focus.

[00:23:20] Scott Kinka: And my next question was going to be, do you have a contrarian hot take about AI? And that was it. So you nailed it.

[00:23:27] Chad Townes: I don’t think it’s going away. I think it’s going to get a little bit of a facelift on it.

[00:23:34] Scott Kinka: We love sharing books. What are you reading right now? What’s on the nightstand?

[00:23:38] Chad Townes: You know, I get away from technology when I’m at home. I’m reading “Long Shot” by Harlan Coben. It’s a mystery novel. He’s got a series of books. I started reading them because they were based in Connecticut, and I lived in Connecticut at the time. So a lot of what he wrote about—I sat in that diner, I went to that location. But they make you think. You’re always trying to figure out who did it. And it’s my curiosity, but in a way that doesn’t keep me up at night.

[00:24:05] Scott Kinka: My oldest daughter consistently abuses me over my reading choices because she’s always like, “Dad, like you, I always talk about books with you, and all you do is read business books now.” So I’m like, and then you’re about the fourth person this year who’s said, “I don’t read business books. That’s not my first choice.” Yes. I’m going to have to heed some of her advice and yours on that one. All right. Last one. We’re in some dystopian future. One app still working on your AT&T wireless phone—which one would it be?

[00:24:40] Chad Townes: That’s a hard one. Probably Spotify. I mean, if you’re stuck and you have nowhere to go, I love to throw music on in the background. It can change your feeling, change your mood. You can get some podcasts out of it, you can maybe learn about AI. So it would give you something to fill the void, fill the time, and fill some of that curiosity that I couldn’t get elsewhere.

[00:25:02] Scott Kinka: Well, you called out my next question, which is what’s the most useful app?

[00:25:05] Chad Townes: Oh boy. I mean, right now for me, it’s probably Uber. I hate to say that because it’s so basic, but I like to have fun. I would end up leaving my car all over the place without it. So I really enjoy the freedom it gives you to just go and do. You don’t have to worry about traffic, you don’t have to worry about parking. You just get out there and go. And I like to be around other people, and it gets me there when I need it.

[00:25:31] Scott Kinka: Well, this was a great chat. We squeezed it in between a bunch of sessions. This was great. I would love to have another opportunity. If somebody wants to learn a little bit more about you, I’m sure you’re out on socials and all that. How do they find you?

[00:25:43] Chad Townes: Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m not super active, but I’m working on beefing that up a little bit. You can look me up via AT&T. I’d be more than happy to talk with anybody that wants to get into a one-on-one conversation and dive a little deeper.

[00:25:55] Scott Kinka: I love that. Well, thank you first off, Chad. I appreciate you being here, making it to Miami, jamming this into the half hour we had in between. We’re going to go into a meeting right after this. So, here we are. Thank you.

[00:26:09] Chad Townes: Thanks.

[00:26:10] Scott Kinka: And that is a wrap on this episode of the Bridgecast. If today’s conversation gave you something to think about, hit subscribe, leave us a review, share it with your team. We’re so happy to have Chad Townes as our guest. Thanks.

[00:26:22] Chad Townes: Thank you.

[00:26:23] Scott Kinka: Listen. If you made it this far, there must have been some good content, or you’re just a fan or a relative of mine. In either case, we appreciate you spending your most valuable asset with us—your time. We don’t take that lightly. We’d also like to say one more time that we’re appreciative of Bridgepoint Technologies and their belief and sponsorship of this show. We hope that if you or someone you know is thinking about your company’s digital transformation or simply the next IT project that you may not have the resources, budget, or time to get to, Bridgepoint—one of the country’s fastest-growing technology advisory and procurement firms—can help. Check out bridgepointtechnologies.com. Don’t forget the “e” on Bridgepoint, or simply reach out to me at skinka, S-K-I-N-K-A, at bpt3.net. Also, take a minute, please, to give us a five-star review on your favorite platform. It helps give us the visibility to reach other people like you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bridgecast. I’m Scott Kinka. And until next time, there’s a lot of noise out there in business and in life. Do what you can to be the signal. Thanks.